Snake Sneak
Posts: 128
Joined: Friday, 9th March 2018, 20:26
Shorten Hell Branches
Hell has four branches that are, for the most part, the same thing in four different flavors. That's O.K., but it overstays it's welcome. The six transitory floors per branch aren't -so- bad since you just beeline for stairs and descend, but there's also really not much to them. Most of the encountered enemies simply aren't a threat at this point of the game, there is no loot, and there is TWENTY FOUR OF THEM. 24 floors. Isn't that... a bit excessive for what effectively accounts to padding between the vestibule and the Hell Lords?
By shortening hell branches from, say, 7 floors to 5 floors, there's now only 16 floors of drudgery instead of 24. 4 transitory floors per branch is still sufficient to preserve the original feeling. Hell will still be pretty much exactly as difficult as it was before, but it'll take a hunk less time to clear out.
An announcement when the Demonic Rune spawns on a floor of Pan would be nice too, because currently the only thing "gained" is making the player have to mostly-explore many more Pan floors that don't contain much of interest. Yes, it would turn mundane Pan floors into "just beeline for a portal", but is that actually a problem? Is something of value gained by making a player explore through floors of no interest, praying to spot a rune? We already have to do this for a potentially long time in the Abyss, and one must already clear a minimum of 5 pan floors inbetween searching for portals, which sounds sufficient as-is.
Cutting down on uninteresting portions of extended and focusing on the fun parts would make for a more concise, engaging experience. I like the current form of it, over all, it just contains a bit too much... drudgery.